One of the more famous tag lines from President-elect Trump on the campaign trail was: “To my African-Americans: what do you have to lose?” If Alabama senator Jeff Sessions becomes the next attorney general of the United States, the answer is: everything.

There is no doubt that Steve Bannon – the executive chairman of the far-right website Breitbart News and newly minted senior adviser to the president-elect – has no place in the White House. Nor does Lt Michael Flynn, an Islamophobe with ties to Vladimir Putin who is Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as national security adviser. And yet, the most troubling appointment thus far has to be Alabama senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to serve as attorney general.

Sessions’ record on race first came to light during his confirmation for a federal judgeship in 1986. A prosecutor testified before Congress that Sessions had said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “OK until I found out they smoked pot”. Sessions said he had been joking, but his judgeship was rejected. Many alarming allegations were made during the hearings, but the most disturbing involved the “Marion three”.

In 1984, the then US attorney Sessions prosecuted three civil rights workers, who were registering black people to vote in Alabama, for purportedly committing voter fraud. Sessions charged Albert Turner, his wife Evelyn Turner, and their fellow activist Spencer Hogue with 29 counts of fraud under the Voting Rights Act – with the group facing a sentence of over 100 years if they were convicted. All three were found not guilty.

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The Marion Three never received a sincere apology from Sessions. And the senator’s existing hostility toward African Americans is proof that he has not learned anything from that experience.

There will be some who will argue that we should not judge someone’s present qualifications based on their past. Even if that’s the case, Sessions’ current record on race and as a US senator is equally terrifying.

Sessions believes the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is an “intrusive piece of legislation”. He has opposed efforts to remove the Confederate flag from state property. He has voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. He called for a constitutional amendment to stop granting automatic citizenship to people born in the US. He agreed with President-elect Trump’s ban on Muslims migrating to the US. He opposes same-sex marriage, and when Trump was quoted about grabbing women by their vaginas, Sessions called it a “stretch” to characterize that as “sexual assault”.

These are all deeply problematic views for anyone to hold – let alone the top law enforcement officer of the United States.

The Department of Justice’s mission is, among other things, to protect Americans from discrimination regardless of race, color, creed or sexual orientation. With Sessions, we have a well-documented history of hostility toward minority communities and vocal opposition to the laws that he would be sworn to protect and enforce should he be confirmed. Someone who was too problematic for the US Senate to confirm in 1986 should be too problematic for the Senate to confirm in 2017.

During an era of rampant voter suppression and strained police-community relations, the Department of Justice is as important as it has ever been in the lives of Americans – especially African Americans and Latino Americans who bear the brunt of police violence and voter suppression. An attorney general with a track record of hostility towards women, communities of color and the LGBT community is simply unfit to serve.

So to answer President-elect Trump’s question: “What do African-Americans have to lose?” With Sessions’ appointment to serve as the 84th attorney general of the United States, the answer is easy: everything.